The whole world is incapable of judging either right or wrong. But it is certain that actionless action can judge both right and wrong. Perfect happiness is keeping yourself alive, and only actionless action can have this effect. This is why I want to say:
Heaven does without doing through its purity,
Earth does without doing through its calmness.
Thus the two combine their actionless action and all forms of life are changed and thus come out again to live! Wonder of wonders, they have not come from anywhere! All life is mysterious and emerges from actionless action. There is a saying that Heaven and Earth take actionless action, but yet nothing remains undone. Amongst the people, who can follow such actionless action?
Chuang Tzu’s wife died and Hui Tzu came to console him, but Chuang Tzu was sitting, legs akimbo, bashing a battered tub and singing.
Hui Tzu said, ‘You lived as man and wife, she reared your children. At her death surely the least you should be doing is to be on the verge of weeping, rather than banging the tub and singing: this is not right!’
Chuang Tzu said, ‘Certainly not. When she first died, I certainly mourned just like everyone else! However, I then thought back to her birth and to the very roots of her being, before she was born. Indeed, not just before she was born but before the time when her body was created. Not just before her body was created but before the very origin of her life’s breath. Out of all this, through the wonderful mystery of change she was given her life’s breath. Her life’s breath wrought a transformation and she had a body. Her body wrought a transformation and she was born. Now there is yet another transformation and she is dead. She is like the four seasons in the way that spring, summer, autumn and winter follow each other. She is now at peace, lying in her chamber, but if I were to sob and cry it would certainly appear that I could not comprehend the ways of destiny. This is why I stopped.’
Uncle Legless and Uncle Cripple were touring the area of the Hill of the Dark Prince and the zone of Kun Lun where the Yellow Emperor stayed.69 Without warning a willow tree suddenly shot up out of Uncle Cripple’s left elbow. He was certainly most surprised and somewhat put out.
‘Sir, do you dislike this?’ said Uncle Legless.
‘No,’ said Uncle Cripple. ‘What should I dislike? Life exists through scrounging; if life comes through scrounging, then life is like a dump. Death and birth are like the morning and the night. You and I, Sir, observe the ways of transformation and now I am being transformed. So how could I dislike this?’
Chuang Tzu went to Chu to see an ancient desiccated skull, which he prodded with his riding crop, saying, ‘Sir, did you follow some unfortunate course which meant you brought dishonour upon your father and mother and family and so end up like this? Sir, was it perhaps the cold and hunger that reduced you to this? Sir, perhaps it was just the steady succession of springs and autumns that brought you to this?’
So saying, he pulled the skull towards him and lay down to sleep, using the skull as a head-rest. At midnight he saw the skull in a dream and it said, ‘Sir, you gabble on like a public speaker. Every word you say, Sir, shows that you are a man caught up with life. We dead have nothing to do with this. Would you like to hear a discourse upon death, Sir?’
‘Certainly,’ said Chuang Tzu.
The skull told him, ‘The dead have no lord over them, no servants below them. There is none of the work associated with the four seasons, so we live as if our springs and autumns were like Heaven and Earth, unending. Make no mistake, a king facing south could not be happier.’
Chuang Tzu could not believe this and said, ‘If I got the Harmonizer of Destinies to bring you back to life, Sir, with a body, flesh and blood, and companions, wouldn’t you like that?’
The skull frowned, looked aggrieved and said, ‘Why should I want to cast away happiness greater than that of kings and become a burdened human being again?’
Yen Yuan went east to Chi and Confucius looked very anxious. Tzu Kung stood up and asked him, ‘May I ask, as a junior master, why you have looked so anxious, Sir, since Hui has gone east to Chi?’
Confucius said, ‘That is a very good question! Kuan Tzu70 had a saying that I think is very apposite. He said, “A small bag cannot hold anything big and a bucket on a short rope cannot reach the water in the depths.” Likewise it is also true that destiny has its particular structure and the body its proper uses, which you can neither add to nor subtract from. I am worried that when Hui arrives he will talk to the Duke of Chi about the Tao of Yao, Shun and the Yellow Emperor, and thereafter he will continue by talking about Sui Jen and Shen Nung.71 The ruler will then try to see if he measures up to all this and will find he does not. As he is unable to measure up he will be distressed and when such a person is distressed – death!
‘Have you never heard this story before? Once upon a time, a seabird alighted in the capital city of Lu. The Earl of Lu carried it in procession to the ancestral shrine, where he played the Nine Shao music and offered the offerings of the sacrifice to it. However, the poor bird just looked confused and lost and did not eat
